My Birthday

I GOT TRANSFERRED!!! To Oran!! It´s basically touching Bolivia. It´s not a big city, and I have dirt roads again I´m soooooo happy and excited.  I had to take a 5 hour bus ride and it and we had to go really slow in certain parts where the road was bad.    My new companion is Hermana Saenz from Equador.  She´s 25 and is an English teacher. She´s super funny and great.

My birthday was awesome!!!!  I got 2 cakes (one from my companion and one from the investigator that I wrote about the last time), and cupcakes, and a present- it pretty much rocked except I had to leave my area and my cakes. :( So now I can´t continue to eat them for breakfast.

I almost forgot, I saw (via satellite) my first temple dedication this week!! It was so beautiful.  Elder Cristofferson (who served his mission here and can speak Spanish well) and Elder Uchtdorf (who... can´t) It was so cool to be able to hear the dedicatory prayer in English and Spanish and feel the spirit in the both languages.  

Everyone here is so happy because now there is a temple 10 hours from here  instead of 22.  I never realized how big of a blessing temples were.

And the cultural event was BEAUTIFUL.  I want to learn how to do traditional dance.

We got the best ice cream I´ve had in my entire life last P-Day

My candle was a firework.

We went to an art museum and I thought I was funny, and the security guard too.  He followed us around the whole time and tried not to laugh. And probably because he thought we were gonna ruin the art or something like that.

 With one of my favorite members

Post Mothers day letter

We have an investigator who has a hard time remembering to read The Book of Mormon.  So we started fasting for him, AND THAT NIGHT HE COULDN'T¨T SLEEP BECAUSE HE HAD SUPER STRONG FEELINGS TO READ THE BOOK OF MORMON! He read basically the whole night.  The Lord responds to our fasts.

And then he couldn´t go to church the next day because a pigeon flew into his room the 2 hours he slept.  But he really wanted to go to church so he ran about 20 blocks after he got the bird out.  He missed everything and felt super bad.  It was pretty funny!

I love you guys!

Hermana Shumway

We´re pretty

Why we can´t have Pringles during our studies.

 We were really excited to be able to talk to our families on mothers day.

I´M MORE THAN HALF WAY DONE WITH MY MISSION. :( :( :( :( :(

This week was super fun!  We had a ward activity and we ate a ton of asado (which freaked me out to see so much raw flesh and cut bones..)!  We played volleyball and basketball with every one, even though it was really hard in a dress. And, we played a shooting game and I totally schooled everyone and won!  And my companion accidentally hit one of the President´s kids in the head with a basketball.... That wasn´t exactly the best but it was pretty funny.

There is a little store (it´s the front room of a house) in front of our house that we always buy things from.  The owner also sells food, and she´s pretty good friends with us so when we passed by the other day she asked us if we wanted to try locro.  Salta is famous for its locro.  It´s probably one of the weirdest things I´ve ever eaten but it was SOOOO good.  It´s like a stew, that is made in a pot that I could easily fit inside.  Almost bigger than the stove itself, and it literally has everything.  Everything.  I ate a bowl full of squashes, corn, herbs, pig tongue, cow intestines, chicken and beef on the bone, salami, potatoes, cheese, EVERYTHING.  It was so good.  I didn´t even care that the I ate parts of animals I never would have eaten before.  Even though they looks weird, they didn´t taste weird.  

This was actually one of the hardest weeks in my mission so far.  But, we had a SUPER less active member come to church!  And, we had investigators come to the family home evening we teach every week, and the ward activity.  And I´m participating in a special (and really small- there is about 15 of us) choir because we are going to be having Elder Viñas from the 70 visiting us! I´m super excited!!!  

I´m really excited to get to talk to you guys this week.  I´m practicing my English with my companion during language studies.  (Last week I has an awkward encounter with some tourists from Colorado and couldn´t speak super well)

I love you all!

Hermana Shumway   

I love you people

Hey!  I don´t really have a lot of time :(  

I love you people, I´m super happy.  I had a conversation in English today with some tourists from Colorado- and my voice was SUPER awkward.  But I gave them advice about the prices of souvenirs.  So that was pretty cool.

This week we met a lot of really interesting people.  

A Vegetarian man that has a braid all the way down his back who likes to sing his prayers every day.

A man who is "resurrected" and "saw God".  He was really interesting, and offered to come to our church as a guest speaker.  He wasn´t crazy, crazy. He has a really nice family and house and job and is SUPER nice.

For some reason all the people I feel like I should contact are really well off atheists.  Right now we are teaching an ex-congressmen who´s traveled to practically every country who is SUPER atheists-  hasn´t prayed since he was 7.  But, he´s reading the Book of Mormon.  He´s super smart, and we get a long really well.  He thinks it´s funny that we won´t drink tea with him, but we can drink matte.  

We also taught a ton of other people who only believe in science.  I always get really excited to talk with them, because I really like science and help them try to put the two things together.  I never once talked with someone in my other area who didn´t believe in God.

Hermana Shumway

  it´s really fun to annoy my companion.

The hamburgers from the McDonalds here are beautiful

Happy, happy happy!

Because the church offices are in my area, all of the Hermanas that are doing their visa work have to spend the night in our apartment.  And we have to do splits with them.  When I first started out here I didn´t really like it (because I love working with my companion, and the other hermanas don´t know our investigators), but it´s really cool to get to know the other hermanas.  And this week we had a HUGE miracle while I was on splits with an hermana from Brazil!

We went to a REALLY, REALLY inactive members house (actually outside of his house because he never lets us enter!)  And he told us to leave, stop bothering him, that he never wants to pray or step foot in the church again, normal stuff.  Then I felt prompted to remind him of the last time he accompanied us (about 2 months ago) and how much fun we had and how great we all felt.  He kinda stopped talking after that, and we left him with a prayer.  We left to visit other people and I was a little bummed.  And then he sent us a really long message that made my week.  He said that he was sad the moment we left his house, and he realized he was only happy when he was in the church, when he read his scriptures, helped us in the work, and did all the things to help him feel the spirit!  

I couldn´t help but cry when I read this.  A few days after he left with us for the day, and is helping us IMMENSELY with some of our investigators.  I sat next to him during sacrament meeting, and I´ve never seen anyone SO HAPPY after taking the sacrament.  He couldn´t help but smile with all of his heart and sigh audibly!  I´m so grateful for the spirit and how it helps us be happy.  We can find happiness in a lot of things, but the only true joy we can feel is through the spirit of God and the light of Christ.  

I´ve never been happier in my life.  There is no greater happiness, than sharing this happiness with someone whose never felt it in their life before.

Do the things that will help you feel the spirit and be happy!  

-Hermana Shumway

Judging by my photos, guess how much weight I´ve gained.  I´ll bring back analfajor for whomever is closest!

If you want in on guessing Courtneys weight email Jill and I will let her know your guess next week in our email.

Making wonderful progress

This week was so incredibly wonderful for my progress.  My new companion was a little like Moses and couldn´t speak (she was sick) so I had to do everything.  Luckily she´s better now and we can teach togather!

I dyed the crazy grandma´s hair this week. She asked us if we knew how to dye hair and I told her not really but I would be happy to do it!   I was really excited because she doesn´t normally sit in for our lessons.  So we were able to talk about Lehi´s vision while I dyed her hair with a toothbrush.  She got a little mad at me because a was a bit timid with the amount of pressure I used.  

We have an AMAZING young woman in our ward who always accompanies us, and wants to serve a mission.  All of her family have been members their whole lives and always go to church, with the exception of her stepdad.  We´ve been teaching him a little bit and most reciently we bore our testimonios of eternal families.  He went to church for the 1st time in his life this sunday.  His family couldn´t be happier.  

I´m recieving to many blessing it´s crazy.

I love you guys, and I´m really excited to have eternity together.

Hermana Shumway

Conference

Woah.  Marissa and Tinly are growing up!

Ha ha, I got the photos that you sent me!  And all the elders in the offices saw them......  They were really nice and didn´t tease me.  

My companion died (finished her mission) today.  My new companion es la Hermana Quiceno de Colombia.  And I´m now senior companion!  (but it´s kinda weird because we have the same amount of time in the mission field)

THE CONFERENCE WAS AMAZING!!!  Except they didn´t give any talks to help members recognize their necessity to do mission work.  All the sessions on Saturday just made them excited to start families, and the Elders uncomfortable.  

This time I was able to watch the conference in the ¨Gringo Room" of the chapel in English.  So we did hear when they opposed.  We all laughed when Uchtdorf told them to talk with their stake presidents.  

For Easter they don´t really celebrate too much.  Each kid gets a couple of chocolate eggs, and they don´t eat meat all week for the sacred week.  (But they can still eat chicken and fish, because in Argentina they aren´t meat) And all the people who aren´t normally religious go to mass.

We´ve had so many miracles this week with members from the ward.  We had a inactive member who wanted his name erased from the church come, and he now want´s top keep coming back.  A different member who hasn´t been in years enjoy the words of the prophets. 

We also had an appointment with the families to animate them to invite their friends to the conference, and we practiced with them how they could do it.  We had one family call and invite a friend while we were teaching them!

The lord is blessing us immensely, and the work is going to skyrocket with their help!!

I love you all, 

Hermana Shumway 

 When we watched the womens conference and WENT TO BURGER KING AFTER!

 My companion and a convert that reminds me of Nicole

 My companion had to say goodbye to all the members 

 The crazy chicken eating  grandma!